limaxophobiacq

Wrong board (ghostheart isn't in PoE1), but generally you'd go for Vicious/Protective/Stalkers Link and Predators Sense with ghost heart, the big advantage of the subclass is you don't have to invest much in the companion and can just 'fire' it at your target. You certainly don't want any of the healing powers since it's cheaper to just re-summon it.

This great but WTF you can give skuldr meat to the xaurip in Cilant Lîs for a peaceful resolution? I must have entered that room from the left and killed the poor guy dozens of times over the years and every time I've wondered a little why they bothered with the dialogue since he always ended up fighting you anyway.

New PoE1 builds just in time for christmas! Never knew that about wildstrike belt, I haven't played with a druid other than Hiravias in PoE1 since playing one for my very first playthrough so maybe I'll try it out. Yes but sadly autumns decay being damage over time doesn't work with the elemental talents in PoE1 which I think has never been fixed (other than in MaxQuest old fix patch).

Priest of Wael/Soulblade using the Whispers of the Endless Paths greatsword seemed decent enough when I tried it though I didn't complete a full playthrough with it. The "offensive parry" enchantment on the sword (which get you free attacks when enemies miss you) combined with Arcane Veil from priest of Wael and Borrowed Instinct from cipher get your deflection quite high and let you generate a good amount of focus from automatic counter-attacks as long as there's melee enemies. You will need to switch weapons for some fights though too another two-hander (maybe Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff if you take lots of Metaphysics skill which seems appropriate for a mystic) since Whispers of the Endless Paths is very ineffective when there aren't melee attackers. For this build you would want max Intellect, some perception, and fairly balanced attributes are fine since you will be on the front line. Mid game you probably spend most time of your time casting buffs but later you can cast minor avatar -> arcane veil -> borrowed instinct and start swinging and blasting.

I will say I do not feel like fighter belongs with rogue in bottom tier IMO. Knockdown with Barrage and dual-wielded high-accuracy weapons is probably the most reliable single-target CC in the game and once you get Charge it's very fast to apply to any enemy. With extra Knockdown talent it's excellent for taking any single strong enemy completely out of a fight. Even through high fortitude and +20 vs. prone you can knockdown dragons and Concelhaut without much trouble in my experience, rolling twice and adding weapon accuracy makes it very unlikely to miss especially if you use something like the deadfire-pack soulbound club in one of your hands on a high-int fighter. Their accuracy is also obviously nice with item abilities. They don't have the solo potential of paladin of course, they are time-limited in tanking with Vigorous Defense and don't have any AoE damage, but in a party I think they belong with the other bread-and-butter classes.

More experienced players than me will probably chime in but it is kind of trying to do a lot of things, so I understand why you're going for bellower to try to dump as many phrases as possible into one invocation. Outside the grave calling abuse I do feel like soulblade generally wants things from a multiclass that chanter just doesn't provide like martial passives or strong self-buffs/defenses that stack with with borrowed instinct. It will probably work because fundamentally neither chanter or soublade lose anything vital by multiclassing and have good action-economy but a lot or other soulblade multiclasses like Heirophant/Mindstalker(Trickster)/Transcendent/Mystic(Wael) will work a lot better. If you are going for chants for combat buffs like Mith Fyr and Silver knights, the reduced chant radius from bellower is also a pretty significant downside since you won't be giving them to much of your party. Edit: Obviously you can go full in on abusing many lives pass and grave calling, but then you still would be better of with a more martial multiclass and a friendly troubadur chanting it. Edit 2: It is kind of hard to answer because you say you don't want to abuse the grave calling to hard, but getting focus from the chill fogs is really what makes the classes synergize, so the amount you are willing to abuse it is going to determine how well it works.

Oh second set on Pallegina was Kitchen Stove (with Thunderous Report) + Light Shield. In some fights I would open with that (since it also means you get the better accuracy on the first Long Nights Drink roll) but it felt to fiddly to bother with most of the time. Rekke is generally better as either of his multiclasses, so I would consider FIghter/Barbarian (maybe with Willbreaker morningstar) over single class fighter. Single class fighter is tanky and has some utility with Mule Kick vs bosses but it just doesn't do much damage.

Im not sure what you mean by only being able to use one exhortation at a time? They are active targeted abilities you use on a character, the liming factor is that they generally have very high Zeal cost so just using them to buff people eats all your Zeal in a couple seconds and the buffs don't last that long but they have very fast cast times so you can use them in reaction to something bad happening to a character, generally the only ones i pick are Reviving and Liberating. Most Zeal is for Shared Flames and Lay on Hands. Because of linger you generally want 2 phrases in your chant so like Ancient Memory + Silver Knights for deflection and healing for example. For summons once you have Ancient Weapons the others become obsolete but whatever the highest one she currently has access to at any level is probably good, you want to respec chanters using summons a lot since whenever you get a new higher summon the old ones generally become obsolete. Invocations aren't very good for healing, generally stick to chants for slow team healing + lay on hands for healing a single character when they lose a lot of health. 2 handed Fighter/Monk monk Rekke with Turning Wheel, Thunderous Blows, swift flurry etc. is very good, can give him almost any good two-handed weapon and it will work. Saru-Sichr (morning star) or Voidwheel (greatsword) are both pretty nice.

I had this setup for her (with Sashas Scimitar on a second chanter) last playthrough. The -1 armor rating aura of blackened plate is amazing utility and stacks with other AR reduction and it gives you another healing or damage aura. From the time she gets the ogres and then later upgrading to Ancient Instruments summoning is just stronger than any other actions she can take so you just want to stack passive abilities and tanking on her. Her subclass unique Sworn enemy upgrade is pretty terrible so her impact is really from summoning + auras + shared flames + lay on hands and the occasional Liberating Exhortation. I did have her chanting the Long Nights Drink which made me a little torn that maybe I should have used Lethandria's Devotion instead of a heavy shield but the difference in deflection from Cadhu Scalth is pretty massive.

With 'fighters' I really mean non-tactician fighters yes.

I think the purpose of a fighter/caster multi and monk/caster multi is just different. The monk/caster is primarily trying to buff up their spells with the monk self-buffs to Int/Dex/Might/Accuracy and generally does not do that many monk things while the fighter/caster multi is actually trying to be a fighter and tank while casting. Also positionally some caster abilities that hit a cone or a radius around the caster benefit by being on a character that can stay right in front of the enemies and take hits without a problem. For the Cipher multiclass though Transcendant is amazingly strong and has better synergy than Psyblade. But I would say Cleric (and single-class priest) > Contemplative. For Wizard/Chanter/Druid, fighter and monk have pretty balanced pros and cons as multiclasses in my eyes.

Solid video, between you and thelee you actually convinced me paladin probably does belong down in niche. I still really like Arcane Knight but admittedly most of the power there comes from the wizard half. My biggest disagreement/nitpick would probably be that in my experience fighter/caster multiclasses + Tactical Barrage + Conquerors Stance are as good or stronger than Fighter/Martial multiclasses + Disciplined Strikes + Mob Stance.

Yeah its not necessary but the recovery skipping and +3 PL is very nice and if you are getting the robe there's no reason not to get the wand. I didn't bring up unstable coil because the OP specifically wasn't interested in bugs and if you only trigger one inspiration it's not anything special 5 out of 6 times.

Seeing your revised rankings honestly pretty reasonable given your criteria, I do think fighter is very good in a lot of multiclasses, though depending on how you look at it it's mediocre performance single-classed might bring it down but then the same could be said for chanter which is amazing multiclassed but doesn't really get enough for going single-classed (the dragon is really cool though).

Berserker Frenzy is 30% hit-to-crit with melee IIRC. I've read the thread but going through every comment and replying is a pain so I'll just leave my general opinion here. Like others I find the high rating of ranger and fighter and low rating of druid, chanter, and paladin strange. Ranger is honestly pretty terrible single-classed (no PL scaling to speak of, bad PL 8-9 abilities) and is niche for characters who want to max out ranged weapon accuracy, which is mostly just cipher and rogue multiclasses (and for rogue I think rogue + cipher is still just better and more fun than rogue + ranger). I hate how many passives you have to spend for your pet as a non-ghost heart and for ghost heart you lose out big if you multiclass with another class that has good summons like wizard/monk/chanter. Chanter I can't agree with, 'Called to his Bidding' alone is too busted. Using all the abilities on the weapons is a pain but getting 10 knockdowns, 10 wounding shot, 10 flames of devotion every time you summon them is ridiculous in addition to the bodies. Chanters also get the best class-specific item in the game with Sashas Singing Scimitar, which with Robes of the Weyc + the Weyc's Wand makes the chanter better at granting the rest of the party the brilliant inspiration than the cipher which is largely what makes you rate it so highly (and I'm intentionally not counting the multi-proc empower bugs and Least Unstable Coil here). You talk about how good action economy is and chants are amazing action economy, "The long night's drink" is incredible as a passive debuff, the multiplicative damage boost to your party from -25% enemy health and +15% multiplicative fire damage with weapons if you go long nights drink + Mith Fyr costs you 0 actions. Also sure "Each Kill Fed His Fury" is weird with how it gives +5 to attributes instead of inspirations but +5 to three attributes for your whole party with 0.5 second cast time (letting you get it up instantly) and only 4 phrases is a amazing. I've been warming up a lot to both the chanter team-attribute buffs lately despite ones weird mechanics and the others+1 phrase cost on upgrade, its just huge to give buffs this big to your whole party. It's actually turned me off from doing monk multiclasses where a lot of the power comes from the attribute bonuses and inspirations. Sure when you have fully stacking dance of death accuracy and Thunderous Blows and 10 wounds up for +10 Int its a lot of bonuses but unless it's a frontline multiclass charging up wounds with dance of death takes a lot more time than I'd like, and it's only for the monk-multi itself. I was recently considering monk/lifegiver but after consideration felt like no-subclass chanter/lifegiver (i use the unofficial patch Troubadour nerf) simply casting the team buffs and chanting mercy and kindness + ancient memory would not only heal more but also buff the party considerably while at it.